Hashd al-Shaabi renews efforts to form Kurdish faction in Kirkuk

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Shiite-led Hashd al-Shaabi has renewed efforts to form a Kurdish faction for its ranks in Kirkuk, a disputed territory between Erbil and Baghdad.

Formed in 2020, a 150-member Kurdish faction within Hashd al-Shaabi, or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), will be restructured and deployed in northwestern Kirkuk Province in the near future, Kurdistan 24 has learned from a top official of the regiment.

“It is beginning to build Kurdish Hashid, so it would be a door for the Kurdish youth to be enlisted in the force,” Adham Jum’a, a founding member of the force, has told Kurdistan 24.

The unit will be stationed in the Chakhmakha village in Dibis District in northwest Kirkuk.

The efforts have drawn condemnations among the Kurdish local population, saying the formation resembles Kurdish auxiliaries to the former Ba’athist regime led by Saddam Hussein, known among the Kurds as "Jash." They were accused of involvement in several genocidal campaigns against the Kurdish population in the late 1980s. 

The command leadership is not Kurdish, so it can use the forces at any moment against the Kurds, Azmar Ali, a nuts and dry fruit seller in Kirkuk, told Kurdistan 24.

The to-be redeployed Kurdish forces will directly receive commands from the PMF leadership, some of whom have publicly threatened to attack the Kurdistan Region in the past. 

Consisting of mostly Iranian-backed forces, the PMF was formed in 2014 after the Iraqi army capitulated in the face of the ISIS offensive.

The forces, some of whose factions are under US sanctions for human rights violations, are state-sponsored and have an unparalleled influence on the state security apparatus.

The Babylon Movement for example, claims to be a Christian PMF faction in the Nineveh Plains. The US Treasury designated the group's leader, Rayan al-Kildani, for “serious human rights abuses,” in 2019.

“In May 2018, a video circulated among Iraqi human rights civil society organizations in which al-Kildani cut off the ear of a handcuffed detainee,” the Treasury noted.

Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq and the world, Cardinal Raphael Louis Sako, has recently left Baghdad for Erbil in protest of the increasing pressure by the Iran-backed group on the top clergyman.

Additional reporting by Kurdistan 24 Kirkuk reporter Dilan Barzan